Uncle Dick and Lisa's Old Time Animal Tales

A correspondent of the Pall Mau Gazette at Lisbon vouches for the truth of the following narrative, which he translates from the Dario de Notiolas: “At the distance of one kilometer from the village of Fratel, near Niza [i. e. on the frontier of Spain and Portugal, near the Town of Portalegre], Theresa Maria, who was carrying her husbands dinner to him in the fields, was told by a little shepherd-boy that a wolf was prowling about the place. Wishing to see one for the first time in her life, she put down her basket and climbed up to a high place to which the boy directed her. There she saw the animal in the act of devouring a lamb. The shepherd-boy began shouting and throwing stones to see whether it would let go its prey; and the wolf in its fury then attacked the poor little fellow, jumping up at his face, tearing the flesh from his jaws, and throwing him upon the ground. The woman, seeing the boy’s imminent danger, in an impulse of heroic self-devotion, ran at the wolf wholly unarmed, seized tight hold of him, and then, after a struggle, contrived to blind him with a stone, and eventually kill him. Meanwhile, the boy whom she had rescued ran, wounded as he was, to seek help in the village. While several villagers were coming up, armed with guns, stones, and sticks, to kill the beast and save the woman from its fangs, she was returning to the village, covered with blood, and with her arms, hands, and face terribly wounded. She said that at times she was on the point of being overcome, but contrived to keep the animal’s throat in the close hold of her left arm, while hitting him hard on the head with a stone she was able to pick up. It is with regret that all will read what I have now unfortunately to add, that exactly a month afterward the poor creature died there of her wounds. She has left eight children, six of whom are very young, and a distracted husband to morn her loss, but she found comfort in her last sufferings and the pain of such a parting from the recollection that she had given her life for another. The English and Portugese have sent 22 pounds as a small consolation to the poor and industrious family, who have to morn a noble heart taken from them.”
In a postscript, written two days later, the correspondent says: “I am sorry indeed to have to add to the narrative that the little shepherd-boy for whom the brave woman sacrificed her life is dead also. She was allowed to console her dying hours with the belief that she had perished in saving a life. But it was not to be so. The poor child died in the terrible sufferings of hydrophobia. [Rabies] Besides the subscription raised on behalf of the bereaved husband and the orphans, another has very properly been started to erect a monument at Niza, so that such a deed may not be forgotten.”